Saturday, May 08, 2010

Sauce for our political geese

Recent problems regarding expenses and pensions for our politicians arise primarily for a common reason: their propensity to exclude themselves from regulations they enact for application to the rest of us.

The solution therefore is for the political classes to formally adopt the following principle: what’s good enough for us is good enough for them.

In that situation you wouldn’t, for example, have
(a) politicians in receipt of ministerial pensions while still in receipt of TD’s salaries, well in advance of normal retirement age.
(b) such pension entitlements calculated on a greatly foreshortened service scale.
(c) permission to claim material expenses and allowances on an unvouched basis.
(d) the use of a state car and drivers for personal and/or party political use without incurring any benefit-in-kind tax liability.

From now on we should have no special exemptions for politicians. That might help regain public trust.

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